darius

I've been looking for a service just like this. Thanks!

Or just use devise. Backbone will work just fine with it.

My first reaction was wtf but after playing with it for a minute I must say it's fun.

HaHaHa. I think this is quite funny: "Kayak across the Pacific Ocean." I wonder if this is humor from google...

it's down right now... i guess they weren't expecting anybody to test it out

oh Jesus, how is this simplified? you just introduced a bunch of new functionality. now instead of downloading attachments you need to browse through modules to find them? what happens if the sender is not a trusted contact? it should be simplified not more complicated (which is not what happens if you add IM to it). if your targeted user thinks that FF is too complicated then good luck finding the IM box in your new simplified browser!

Yes! We have the production server on EC2 and the development one runs on a virtual server from Spry. From our load tests EC2 can handle about 6 times more site usage.

An nou fericit! (Romanian)

Man, good idea... unfortunately I didn't even think about personal use for S3 and I already signed up for an online backup service. I kept thinking that an online backup system would work great with S3 but not for a second I thought of using it for myself :(

Didn't understand much but you might appreciate this: http://tele-immersion.citris-uc.org/projects. And guess what? It is from Berkeley =)

happy 2008!

Thanks everybody. I appreciate all the good links. I'll go experiment a bit with them.

You really need to let the visitors know what you are trying to accomplish with the website. After trying all kind of stuff I had to come back here to get a feeling of what you were trying to do.

You need to make it dead clear what the website does if you want to retain any users.

I'm closing my browser right now :)

Good to know that there are so many Romanians on YC. I moved from Romania in Bay Area 6 years ago. I just went back there for a few weeks in August. Life is getting more expensive there and from what my friends were telling me, there is an increasingly demand for programmers, therefore the wages are going up.

I was thinking about moving back for a while but I don't think this will happen very soon. If anybody would like to talk about Romania some more feel free to email me (email address in the profile).

Oh man, I would have loved to attend... To bad I didn't know about it.

We tried to move away from the regular excel looking calculator. Retirement planning is usually something very time consuming and boring that people keep pushing off. We wanted to make it a bit more engaging in order to keep people focused. As a result the drop out rate once the users get started is pretty low.

Thanks. Fixed the little age bug.

So would you take out the whole typing thingy or would you just make it type faster? We had a big drop out rate on that page and from our interviews we came to the conclusion that people thought that was the end. We decided to put that animation there because it 'forces' people to read the text. We all know that nobody ever reads plain text instructions.

Way to go! Really good news.

I see you moved away from Java. Have you guys tried JBoss Seam (http://www.jboss.com/products/seam)? If not I strongly suggest you give it a try. If you love RoR I'm almost sure you'd appreciate JBoss Seam.

You are right, that's what google suggests to do if you hit the 500 emails limit. Using a queue is another option...

I didn't find any other limitations to using google apps.

There is a tall free number to get around using 411: (800)FREE-411. It has some commercials but it saves you a buck from not using 411. I wish I came up with that idea...

this reminds me of the call center movie (http://callcentermovie.com)

Apparently many people gave their information to Wesabe (http://www.wesabe.com), which is a direct Mint competitor.

You need to read the explanation for the German Tank method (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1824525,00.html) to see the formula used to get 104.

Keep hearing the same 'closed software' regarding flash and I don't understand why. There are quite a few open source platforms that produce swfs (open laszlo, aptana, even flex is open source now). Regarding the flash player, it is not any more closed software than IE is.

Also isn't it nice not to have to write javascript code for each browser that exists out there?

Because not everything that you do in a software business is coding. Would you rather spend all your energy on coding and getting that thing to work or would you rather code a few hours and then try to sell your product and do team management for the rest of the time?

VCs won't go around looking for programmers to hire to implement their 'great' idea! Have you ever heard of a VC that said no to giving money to a company and then went and looked for a team to implement that idea? I'd also argue that they like it better if there is a business person in the team.

I got mine through marriage. I came here with a college F1 visa.